appetizer plate

There are times when I go out to eat and I kind of just want to nibble on the appetizers- more fun, more variety, less COMMITMENT than a full on meal-meal.

Now, some cuisine styles don’t exactly lend themselves to making a healthy meal out of appetizers (“Ooh, mozarella sticks and calamari!”) but if you stick with Asia, you can do all right.

With that in mind, I made myself an appetizer-platter style dinner.

Number one, I had a DUMPLING REVELATION today. I have been going through life with mediocre gyoza. NO MORE. Now that I’ve had real, authentic, HMart, made in Korea, quality filled dumplings, I cannot satisfy myself with Trader Ming’s. I have no idea how to read the brand name of these dumplings, but if you can get your hands on them, GET THEM!

On the left are vegetable dumplings (mostly soy and cabbage, and sooo light and sweet and mild and complex in flavor) and on the right are kimchi dumplings, which are wowzas and flavor packed and kind of crazy looking:

I rounded out my hot appetizer plate with some “Asian meatballs”. Meaning, of course, Trader Joe’s turkey meatballs with Sriracha. A common theme of this blog lately has been “everything tastes better with Sriracha.” Cause…. it does!

To get in some cool temperatures, I tried to recreate those awesome sesame dressed salads they give you at sushi bars:

Okay, okay, so not really, but it was good. That’s mixed greens, cucs sliced paper thin, and julienned carrots (they look like carrot sticks in this picture, but use the cucumber slices for scale- they were small, honest).  I dressed it with, in descending order of quantity, seasoned rice vinegar, Sriracha, lime juice, sesame oil, and honey.

Great dinner!

Question of the day: Is anyone else a Cooking Light subscriber? Does anyone else haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate their new format?

great combo

Great combo #1: Toasted apple ‘n cheese sammie.

Put the slightest hint of butter on some whole wheat bread. Broil that side. Flip, then thinly slice 1/2 an apple and put that on top (well, most of it, there’re a few excess slices along with the carrots) along with 3/4 oz. cheese- I used our fun tangy Bulgarian stuff. Broil til the cheese melts:

Sweet apples and oozy salty cheese are the bees knees.

Following this lunch (which was on the early and small side) I headed to the mall. I brought this for fuel for an afternoon snack:

But ended up being efficient enough that I didn’t need it. I arrived home and knew I wanted a snack, but didn’t totally know what I wanted. I knew it should involve protein, and thus the Balance bar was appealing, but it was so teeny tiny and on the unnatural side. So I split the difference:

1/2 a balance bar, and the other half of the lunch apple with 1/2 a tbsp peanut butter. It is funny, because this snack and a whole balance bar have the same number of calories, approximately, but this one gives you a whole lot more bites to eat, and a greater variety of textures and flavors, and less, yknow, weird unnatural stuff. On the other hand, the balance bar was yogurt honey peanut, my favorite flavor :D

only in August…

August is the month of perfect produce. Yeah yeah technically you CAN get tomatoes during the chilly months, but they sure don’t look or taste like this:

I die.

(apologies, just watched the Rachel Zoe project).

That is a salad of tomatoes (heirloom and yellow), fresh basil, salt and pepper and oil and balsamic. Perrrrfecccction.

For a nice easy summer dinner, we had hot dogs. Specifically:

Not bad at all, and a mere 40 calories each (er, well… see how many I ate. But still…), compared to the 340 for a typical frighteningly large Hebrew National, 310 of which are from fat. Yikes!

Our rather unconventional hot dog topping:

  

Upon the advice of Mark Bittman. And you know what… SO GOOD!

So a hotdog (haha, double stack!) with mustard and kimchi, perfect summer tomatoes and, yet another perfect August food, corn on the cob.

DELISH!

Dessert was fun, and you can see the ramekin kind of evolved.

Dessert #1 (not so healthy)

Ghetto Use-up-the-egg yolks key lime custards!

to serve two:

1/4 cup milk

1 T plus 1 t. half and half

1 T plus 1 t. sugar

1.5 egg yolks (there were two, but I scraped off the tops that had gotten rubbery sitting in the fridge)

1 T. key lime juice (I used Rose’s bottled, fresh would be fab I’m sure)

Directions: Preheat oven to 325. Heat milk, half and half, and sugar in a microwave safe container (I used a Pyrex measuring cup) for one minute on 50% power. Meanwhile, whisk together egg yolks and lime juice. When the milk and half and half is hot, whisk it into the egg and lime mixture. Then put through a sieve into two half-cup sized ramekins or custard cups. Put in a baking dish and pour hot water into the baking dish so it makes a nice lil bath for the ramekins. Bake for 25-30 min.

Tastes like key lime pie filling!

Dessert #2, continuing the “only in August” theme:

Farmer’s market peaches you are so perfect I love you I love you I love you.

Desert #3 (I was hungry! It’s just plain ol’ fruit!)

Frozen banana soft serve!

perfect protein

So I am an omnivore and all, but spend so much of the year being a vegetarian for religious reasons (plus, honestly, just love my plants and am not always in the mood for meat) so I am very keyed in to the non-animal protein thing.

As the nutritionally informed among you probably already know, the only complete proteins (all the essential amino acids) are in animal products, soy, and, somewhat randomly, quinoa. It’s definitely possible to great protein without those things, but it means you combine proteins. One of my favorite, simplest ways to do that?

RICE AND BEANS!  

With, obviously, some adornment. This was easy peasy. The only time consuming thing was cooking up brown rice (and I made a 4 serving batch and it cooked while I was catching up with old House episodes online, so an excellent productive use of time anyway). I made that, in veggie broth for extra flava and cause it needed using. When that was almost done, I mashed up some refried beans with some of the homemade salsa juice and nuked that.

Toppings were shredded cheese, avocado (browned a bit but I promise it still tasted awesome), and more homemade salsa.

Muy delicioso! And nutritious. Along with protein, this is packed full of fiber, wonderful monounsaturated fatty acids from the ‘cado, lycopene from the tomatoes, capsaicin from the hot peppers. GREAT STUFF!

You know what tasted REALLY good? When I mixed it all together :D  

Gross looking but heavvvvvvvvvvvvvenly tasting!

mm, carbon!

My beloved Mark Bittman recently published a sort of ode to carbonara. This thing I threw together would probably not impress him- it’s more of a skinny chick meal. However, it is flipping delicious.

Like Marky said, I did start with the meat—but it was turkey bacon.

I put it on medium heat, flipping occasionally til crispy, then took it off on reserve.

Then I added some sliced onions to the pan with (admittedly minimal) drippings and turned the heat way down.

But the drippings worked! The onion caramelized beautifully!

Once that cooked for awhile (8 minutes or so?) I added beautiful heirloom tomato (half a medium large tomato), chopped, and let that cook down.

Then it was pasta time. I made 2 oz of pasta (my particular choice was brown rice fusilli, mainly cause… it’s what we had. It’s not the perfect choice, but it was still really good) and undercooked it by one minute. Then I removed it from the pan of cooking water, saving the liquid (slotted spoon is your friend!) and threw it in with the veggies.

At this point the tomato looked a little sparse, so I lickety split chopped up a bit more tomato and added that. I also added some of the cooking water from the pasta. After letting that cook and combine for a minute or so, I threw it in here:

An egg, the magical binder of a good carbonara, and the bacon slice, that I crumbled.

Here were my seasonings of choice:

   

Fresh basil and super fun cheese! Similar to a Gruyere in texture, but with more of the tang of a Romano. I also added lots and lots of black pepper.

Here is the final dish, after lotsa tossing to cook up the egg:

 

So, um, I hated it. So much so that I licked the bowl.

You know that feeling when you go from having the intellectual experience of putting together the recipe (add x much of y ingredient, cook for z number of minutes) and the physical, emotional, transcendent, brain-stopping experience of eating REALLY GOOD FOOD? This was one of those.

I bit into the pasta and was bombarded with the amazing flavors- smoky and bacon, creamy egg, sweet and slightly acidic tomatoes, caramelized and sweet onions, tangy cheese.

PERFECT!

light and simple

Due to going out for dinner three nights in a row and some not prudent and not particularly satisfying late night snacking, I feel like having small, simple plates today.

So rather than my usual post-Sunday brunch extravaganza, I had a two-parter.

First:

Fruit salad (kiwi, orange, apple, banana, and the last of the blueberries, dressed in lemon juice and honey), another mind boggling Asian yam (looks like a regular potato, tastes like a sweet potato!) with plain yogurt and cinnamon.

After a pause that included a leisurely walk in the park, I enjoyed sustenance of both the couture and culinary varieties on the deck:

Since I felt like La Wintour was watching me,  I went for a salad.

This is a Caesar salad of sorts, for which I had a sudden random craving.

Leftover chicken, mixed spring greens (I find Romaine a bit bland, plus they’re what we had), homemade croutons (stale bread that I cooking spray-ed and garlic salt-ed and then threw in a 400 degree oven til a bit browned), a sprinkling of Parmesan, and homemade dressing (lemon juice, red wine vin, dijon mustard, Worcestershire sauce, minced garlic, and a bit mayo for thickness without the salmonella!)

pho sure

I know I say this all the time, but I love my culturally mishmoshed neighborhood so much, particularly culinarily. Hole in the wall ethnic restaurants are the best- cheap, authentic and homey.

Tonight my friend came over and as she hung up she mentioned “getting food”. Then I looked at the gloomy weather and my brain went PHO PHO PHO PHO and wouldn’t stop, so I dragged her out for Pho (she had never tried it- fortunately she liked it!)

Pho= Vietnamese beef noodle soup experience. The experience goes as follows.

Step 1. Locale

 

Hah Lauren did not know I was taking this. So anyway this one’s my current fave. And I’m delighted to’ve taken its picture, not because it’s high on curb appeal (it is clearly not) but because now I can remember the name of it, which I never can when telling people it’s my favorite (to be fair, the name has changed multiple times).

The interior, believe it or not, is nicer than many of the Pho places in my area:

Yeah it’s Formica and plain chairs, but look how much bigger than usual the CNN-airing TV is!

Step 2: the customizations.

Fresh basil, fresh sliced chilis, lime halves, bean sprouts, and chili paste (and Sriricha, off to the side!)

Step 3 (crucially): the soup itself

I love how every culture has its version of hot soup with carbs. Matzo ball soup, avgolemono, pho. It all comes down to comfort and delicious- throwing some great ingredients on a stove, making a delicious nourishing broth, and serving it. It’s economical, it’s delicious, it’s great when you have a cold, and it is comfort food at its finest.

Here’s my bowl once I finished with it:

Deeeeeeecked outttttttttttt. I’ve noticed over the years that all the actual Vietnamese people dye their soup red with Sriracha, so I do the same, with delicious results.

Today I decided to be adventurous and get eye round, flank steak, and TENDON! (Not badass enough for tripe). The tendon generally infuses the broth with a nice flavor, though is itself on the weird looking side. Next time I might go a bit more Anglo and just get the steak.

But man oh man, pho soothes the soul. The broth is complex and rich and flavorful and at the same time everything is light and refreshing: rice noodles, just little bits of meat, minimal oil, fresh herbs and lime and chilis. LOVE IT!